It’s not a new debate…

By
Blog Admin June 11, 2007

For those who follow health care policy closely, it’s a bit jarring to hear the debate in the Assembly and Senate last week, as legislators make floor speeches and speak in very broad terms about the issue.

While several legislators are very well-versed on health issues, most don’t necessarily concentrate on the particulars of health policy, having to master a range of other myriad subjects. But part of the reason that Health Access spend the time to report on these legislative debates in committee and floor sessions is because they are instructive of the public discourse around health care, and useful for health care advocates.

For this year, we’ve had both informational hearings, policy committee hearings, and now floor votes on the various bills and proposals on health reform. Here’s a compilation of links to our archived reports for this year:

Let’s remember this isn’t the beginning of the debate. It’s instructive to see how past legislative sessions have had similar debates on these topics, from an earlier version of single-payer, SB921(Kuehl), to an employer mandate, SB2(Burton), to universal children’s coverage, AB772(Chan), to other “individual mandate” proposals and other ideas. Here’s some other archived reports that featured hearings and discussion among our policymakers: